-----(Amir POV)-----
The frigid midnight air greeted me as I stepped onto the rooftop of the clocktower. In my hands was a cup of hot chocolate that I was slowly sipping as I approached the gated rails.
The events of today were still on my mind and were keeping me from peaceful sleep. My weakness in that fight and even my awakening, they were just so...frustrating. I awakened too early. I've done so prematurely and it has ruined my structured development plan.
And that sight...
I remember reading somewhere that humans always felt smaller when they saw the world from great heights like mountains. It's because it forces them to recognize how minuscule they are compared to the entire universe. Just a grain of sand, a drop of water in an ever expanding ocean.
Today's experience reminded me of that so vividly.
I shivered slightly from the soft cold wind that blew in and sipped my drink to keep me warm.
Exhaling a long sigh, I plopped unceremoniously onto the ground, managing to somehow keep the contents of my cup from spilling everywhere.
I activated my crest and watched as it came into existence before flickering out and popping right out of it.
All that effort, all that studying, gone.
Because of a moment of emotional high and pride.
I looked at the artificial moon in the sky, unable to hold back my tears any longer.
As they dripped on the ground, my thoughts spiraled.
Why was I so weak?
Why was I so reckless?
Why was I so oblivious?
So confident?
So incredibly and utterly...
"Stupid..."
My crest was now unusable due to it being geared towards neutral mana. My clan trait is unusable due to me being unable to control it. My magic is unusable due to being a chaotic mess.
Fuck.
That was the only word to describe how mad I was.
I held back a sob as I sipped on my dwindling supply of hot chocolate, hoping that it would give me the comfort I needed.
As I sank deeper and deeper into the abyss that was failure and depression, I heard the door to the rooftop clicking open.
Turning my head around to glance over my shoulder, I bore witness to the form of Larxene walking towards me with deliberate slowness and silence, like she was trying to keep a small animal from getting scared and escaping.
I stayed still, allowing her to approach. I turned my head back to face my front as I wiped my eyes, trying to hide my tears.
I felt her sit next to me, I felt her worry, her fear, her hesitation, her guilt.
Damn it, why can you even feel? You're a puppet, what's the point? Why do you express emotions? Why do I feel your emotions...
I kept my head facing forward in order to ignore her or at least try, but that all changed the moment she touched me.
The moment her hand came into contact with my skin, I jumped.
I still remembered her pure excitement as she beat me half to death and I...
I was scared.
I still am.
Despite all that, the thing that I felt the most clearly was pain. Her pain. It radiated out from her like a beacon, overtaking even my fear and regrets. My hesitation to let her touch me and all of my other doubts faded away. Only my instincts were left.
So I let them guide me.
Clink
My cup dropped onto the ground as I jumped onto her frame, hugging her close.
"I'm sorry! I didn't mean it! I'm so sorry!" I shouted, the waterworks coming back full force as apology after the other left my mouth.
I was so confused. Why were things so complicated? I've never dealt with this before and even after coming here, everything was fine. It always turned out fine. So why were things so different this time?
I just don't get it.
My sobs simply increased, both in volume and quantity, and for a good minute or two, I just cried my heart out. No trying to hold back the tears, no trying to hide the negativity that threatened to swallow my mind, nothing but pure expression of emotion.
But what brought such a thing to an end was so simple.
A response. An act of understanding and affection that hit me right in the heart.
My breath hitched as I felt her arms wrap around me and cradle me close as if she was trying to protect me from the world itself. Her hand ran through my locks as she began to rock back and forth to console me.
Those simple actions caused everything to disappear. It helped me forget and for once since the incident, relax. All the hours of thinking and spiraling being thrown out the window.
We sat in that position for who knows how long before I finally lifted my head up and stared at the darkness that covered Larxene's face. I'm sure that I look like a mess with tear tracks and snot running down my face, but...I couldn't come to care.
"Thank you," I whispered softly.
Her nod was more than enough for me as I let my exhaustion win and went right to dream land.
-----(Switch)-----
The sound of thunderclaps rang out through the arena as Larxene dodged one attack after the other while trying to regain a semblance of footing.
I summoned platforms to use as footholds as I bounced around like a pinball, occasionally rushing her, my fists enveloped in pale pink demonic mana.
I willed my demonic mana into my crest and made tears appear in the space all around her, forcing her to stop and creating the opening I needed.
"Ripper!"
A tear appeared in the wind itself, causing a vortex of wind to appear and act as a black hole, drawing her in.
I saw her try and focus her lightning into her legs and took that opportunity to do something that I've mastered to a point of unconsciousness now.
"Tear dispersion!"
The lightning was erased out of existence as I took control of the wind vortex and made it even stronger, adding a gravitational and magnetic pull to ensure her capture.
Her body flew towards the center of the vortex and I allowed mine to do the same as I drew my leg back to go for a kick, only for her to block it with her upper arm and try to grab my leg.
I avoided the grapple with a detonated shockwave from my foot, transitioning into a spin.
I allowed the momentum to carry me, placing my foot back on the ground and ducking low to punch her right in the liver. But like usual, she predicted my move.
She stepped forward into my guard and trapped my arm between hers and her body, lifting her knee in order for it to meet my face.
I hate being short.
The thought slipped through amid my concentration, but it wasn't enough to throw me off. I used my free hand and placed it on her knee while jumping, allowing me to use it's momentum to create distance, and watched as she tried to chase me, only to freeze.
She stood still before raising her arms in surrender, officially ending the spar.
"Good work Larxene. That was great," I said with a smile.
She nodded at me with what I sensed was satisfaction before approaching me and showing her knee which has a magic circle on it. One that would've torn her leg clean off if she kept going.
I placed my hand in front of it and a tear appeared on the circle before it got ripped in half and faded away.
Sitting down onto the ground, I got into a lotus position and began my regular breathing exercises.
How things change.
It had been almost a year since my episode on the rooftop and during that time, things changed, a lot.
The first thing I did after my 'conversation' with Larxene was to lock myself in the library and read psychology books to figure out what was wrong with me.
Turns out, my problem was being too used to success, which almost made me scoff, but reading a bit further made me understand.
For the entirety of my rather short life on earth and the first half of my time here, I had always succeeded. I had never failed a class, never left things undone. Things had always just turned out alright no matter what, and my lack of any real and serious relationship makes it so I never failed socially, as weird as that sounds. Failure in that context being considered the loss of a relationship since I never really stopped being friends with someone because of a fight, and never being seriously involved with someone romantically means I never went through a breakup. It's more like things have always went my way and have turned out okay rather than never failing anything.
It's also a not very healthy dose of being a control freak. It just shone through at that moment since my mental health spiraled in those few hours because of a lack of control over events.
I took all those words to heart and have since then always tried to express my thoughts out loud to myself. It's an exercise to help sort out those same thoughts and abandon the negative ones.
My mental health has improved drastically and my talks with Larxene have also helped. Despite her not being able to speak, I can still feel her emotions, which makes it easy to understand her, even with no words being said. I also figured out the reason I can sense her emotions.
The people here are all part of Scala Ad Caelum and my full control over the dimension and my ability to know all that's happening here includes them too. Don't know why I didn't realize sooner but, better late than never.
Oh, and I also stopped calling them puppets as I've begun to see them as people.
Other than my mental health, my progress in all things combat has increased exponentially.
I've already fixed my magical crest and even improved it so that it's now capable of adapting to any type of mana. I've also been able to remove a lot of equations from the symbols so casting spells has become even more efficient and simple.
Studying the miniature crest that is the demonic attribute within my own blood has also helped in the improvement of my personal crest and has finally confirmed, without a doubt, that my first ever hypothesis is true.
Another thing that I've managed to improve and study is my clan trait Crack.
Crack is a very interesting ability, but the major weakness it has is being unable to create tears on those with a bigger mana pool. And so, I decided to focus on finding more diverse uses, and I have. The first experiment I did was to try and put a tear onto mana, but I found that to be impossible, so I focused on putting tears on magic circles and found that I am capable of it, so I recreated the spell Gram Dispersion from The Irregular At Magic High School and named it Tear Dispersion.
It's become a signature spell of mine.
I've also experimented to see what putting a tear into wind, space, or earth or anything else would do, and the results are interesting. I've divided the effects of Crack into five categories:
Solids like earth and the body are affected by a tear simply appearing and ripping them apart.
Liquids actually get separated, which was weird to see. Water gets torn into hydrogen and oxygen and acids get torn into whatever base elements they were made from per example.
Gases work by the tear creating a vacuum, which is why the wind vortex appeared when I tore the wind. The wind just rushed back into the vacuum to fill the space.
Energy is dispersed, hence my signature spell. With a bit more precision, I could make it so the tear destabilizes instead and causes a backlash.
Concepts are the most interesting and the most terrifying though. Torn concepts cause distortions. I've only been able to tear space and time and those alone made a shiver run down my spine. Spatial tears can create portals with enough precision, but when focusing on just damage, they create spatial distortions that will rip apart anything that gets close to them. Larxene stopped for a reason. As for time, it causes things to age and regress rapidly, which is a lot more lethal than one might think. Most races in DxD get stronger with age, so imagine if Rias was aged drastically. Her demonic mana pool would grow in size, but when she's regressed, her mana pool will stay the same. Her demonic mana will be too much for her body and then...boom.
Shivers
Yeah...moving on.
I've also been learning martial arts from the members and have found that a mix of Marluxia, Saix, and Larxene's styles fits me most. Training with the rest of the members was weird at first, but I've gotten used to it and even come to enjoy it.
Still haven't trained with Xaldin or Xemnas. I don't have a death wish after all.
I'm strong enough now to face them while they use their attributes but without their weapon, which is why I'll be getting one of my own today.
I exhaled as I looked at the ceiling in thought.
It's already been a year on the outside. I've kept count and even though I aged two years in here and became eleven, out there, it's just turned February 2004.
Time passes by quick...huh.
{A/N: Here is a new chapter. I have to admit that I'm quite happy with the first part of this one but not too excited about the second part. Sadly, it's necessary since I don't want to go into a 5 chapter rant about what the MC's doing over that year. First thing to say is that I hope all of you understand why the MC went through that emotional breakdown. He's still a human being with emotions so when something as traumatic as that happens, it's to be expected. Imagine if your first fight was you getting beaten half to death and then losing control and all progress of something. The point of this part is to say, if I see some comment that says Beta MC or something, I'm deleting it and than raging.
Second is that I've written myself into a corner but not really. I've made the puppets/members of Organization XIII a lot more human and aware than I initially planned. That's why I'll be adding a new vote to chapter 0.3 eventually that decides if they should be brought to life or stay as they are now. The two work since what they are now can be maintained without too much trouble.
Third, I need y'all to vote on a weapon. I already have one in mind but I'd like to her y'all's opinion and see if all of you have a similar idea that fits the MC.
Fourth and last thing is an apology. I was a dumbass and forgot that editing a chapter after it's already released removes comments so the Harem Members chapter (0.2) is now without votes most of the votes. I'm hoping all of you can go back and vote again. Bear with me.
That's all for this chapter. Sorry for the long A/N and see ya'll next time.}